“Lindsay, it’s Yuki Castellano. Got time to talk?”
It was good that I was still on the phone with Claire and Cindy. I needed some time to shift gears into talking to my lawyer about the shooting on Larkin Street. Yuki said she’d call back in the morning, and I got on the line with the girls again, but my mind was scrambling.
For the past few days, I’d gotten away from everything—except the upcoming trial of my life.
Chapter 45
THE WATCHER WALKED ALONG the path through the dune grass under a slender crescent moon. He was wearing a wool cap and black sweats, and had his microcamera with the 103 zoom in hand.
He used it to watch a couple making out at the end of the beach, then he turned the lens toward the houses a hundred yards away on the outer loop of Sea View Avenue.
He narrowed his focus to one particular house: a blue Cape Cod with a lot of windows and a double set of sliders leading out to the deck. He could see Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer walking around in the living room.
Her hair was pinned up off her neck, and she was wearing a thin white T-shirt. Twirling a chain around her neck as she talked on the phone. He could see the outline of her breasts under that shirt.
Full but perky.
Nice tits, Lieutenant, sir.
The Watcher knew exactly who Lindsay was, what kind of work she did, and why she said she was in Half Moon Bay. But he wanted to know a lot more.
He wondered who she was talking to on the phone. Maybe the dark-haired guy who’d stayed over last night and had left in a black government-issue Town Car. He wondered about that guy: who he was and if he was coming back.
And he wondered where Lindsay kept her gun.
The Watcher took some pictures of Boxer, smiling, frowning, taking down her hair. Holding the phone between her shoulder and her chin, reaching, breasts moving as she did so, to put up her hair again.
&nbs
p; As he watched, the dog crossed the room and lay down near the sliders, staring out through them—almost as if she were looking directly at him.
The Watcher walked a ways down the beach, toward the smooching lovers, then cut across the dune grass to a parking area where he’d left his car. Once inside, he took his notebook out of the glove box and turned to the tab with Lindsay’s name written in meticulous script.
Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer.
There was just enough glow from the streetlights to add to his notes.
He wrote: Wounded. Alone. Armed and dangerous.
Part Three
Back in the Saddle Again
Chapter 46
THE SUN WAS ONLY a blush on the dawn sky when a loud ringing jarred me out of sleep. I fumbled for the phone, nailed it on the fourth ring.
“Lindsay, it’s Yuki. I hope I didn’t wake you. I’m in the car and this is my only free minute, but I can tell you everything fast.”
Yuki was passionate and smart, and I knew this about her—she always spoke at ninety miles an hour.
“Okay. I’m ready,” I said, flopping back into the bed.
“Sam Cabot is out of the hospital. I deposed him yesterday,” Yuki said, her voice a rhythmic rat-tat-tat. “He recanted his confession of the hotel murders, but that’s the DA’s problem. As for the action against you, he says you fired first, missed him, and that he and Sara returned fire in self-defense. Then you gunned them down. Crock of shit. We know it and they know it, but this is America. He can say whatever he wants.”
My sigh came out as a kind of strangled groan. Yuki kept on talking. “Our only problem is that he’s such a heartbreaker, that pathological little crud. Paralyzed, propped up in that chair with his neck in a brace, quivering lower lip. Looks like a cherub who’s been blindsided —”
“By a vicious, gun-happy chick cop,” I interrupted.